Enzo Maresca has been confirmed to be the next manager of Chelsea Football Club, what exactly can fans expect from him.
Despite having managed less than 70 senior matches, just 53 in England and none in the Premier League, Maresca is set to become Mauricio Pochettino’s successor at Stamford Bridge this week. Even so, he arrives with high expectations.
The 44-year-old will take on the job in similar circumstances to when Ranieri arrived in 2000 with demands to reach the Champions League.
But, despite his relative inexperience, Chelsea do not just see Maresca as a manager capable of getting them into Europe’s premier club competition.
They also want an attractive style of football, based on possession and dominance.
Maresca is a student of Pep Guardiola and his schooling within the Guardiola philosophy plays a major part in their thinking.
A Manchester City-lite style of play is what Maresca has brought to Leicester during his year at the King Power.
That same patient play which has ranked Guardiola’s side bottom of the Premier League for forward-pass proportion year after year was imposed almost overnight in the Championship as only Southampton’s percentage was lower than Leicester’s last season.
The similarities between ‘Marescalator’ and Pep-ball are noticeable but not surprising.
For example, Leicester brought in an effective use of inverted full-backs under the Italian this season.
Ricardo Pereira, the energetic right-back Premier League audiences remember from two years ago, operated in the middle of the pitch in Maresca’s season at Leicester.
But Maresca took it a step further when it comes to his full-backs.
If the Italian would rather invert a full-back from the left wing, then Pereira would simply swap flanks with his opposite defender, leaving opponents guessing as to Leicester’s shape.
This tactical tweak could be a good fit for Chelsea, who under former coach Pochettino deployed Marc Cucurella as an inverted left-back during the season run-in.
From the moment the Spaniard’s position was tweaked at half-time of Chelsea’s match with Aston Villa in April, the Blues won every single game.
Building from the back is another key feature of both Guardiola’s and Maresca’s games, which honestly does not come as a surprise.
One of the Italian’s first signings was goalkeeper Mads Hermansen, who not only became one of the Championship’s top shot-stoppers, but has also shown how very comfortable he is with his feet.
Maresca would allow Hermansen to venture out of his goal to give an extra player in the build-up and form a back two with Jannik Vestegaard.
Such moves would end with Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall providing the finishing touch at the other end of the pitch, with the Leicester midfielder ending the Championship season with 12 goals and four assists.
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The identity of Chelsea’s chief playmaker under Maresca is yet to be known, but signs could point towards a certain Cole Palmer, who has proved himself in his first season as a starter.
Also given the fact that the Italian oversaw his progression from youth prospect to first-team player at Manchester City as their Elite Development Squad manager.
Elsewhere in the final third, Maresca – like Guardiola and another fellow student in Mikel Arteta uses wingers who fall under the category of ‘one-on-one explorers’.
Stephy Mavididi and Abdul Fatawu had the most one-on-one duels in the Championship last season.
These are categories that the likes of Jeremy Doku, Jack Grealish, Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli have dominated in the Premier League in recent years.
Maresca, like Guardiola, is wedded to his style and he looks to have no plan to divorce or to take a second wife or plan in this case.
He lives or dies by it. In the end, that has proven successful, but it is also why he will leave some critics in the King Power stands despite leading them to the Championship title.
His lack of a plan B brought him critics among some of the Leicester City faithfuls. Perhaps it was the inevitable growing expectations.
Perhaps the lack of jeopardy mixed with the playing style just fostered a degree of apathy; Leicester had won 22 of 29 league matches at the time of his comments.
But the growing lack of a Plan B would go on to cause further exasperation around the club, especially on a run of 10 points from as many games between mid-February and April.
One thing for sure with the general impatience shown by Todd Bohely and his team he will need to develop a plan if he is to last long in Stamford Bridge.
In the new manager requirements set out by the Chelsea board, one of the categories included being ‘able to compete with Guardiola and Arteta‘.
Whether Maresca can guide the Blues to those heights remains a major fog that cannot be seen through right now, but if Boehly is looking for a disciple of the much-admired pair, he has found one in the Italian.
